Exhibition : Amplification

7240 Clark, 2nd Floor, Montreal

VERNISSAGE:
3 October 2018, 19:00 - 22:00

Guided Tour :
3 October 2018, 19:00 - 20:30

Eastern Bloc is a decade old. Considering it is a space that celebrates both emerging practices and emerging artists, it is funny to imagine that it has itself moved firmly into the established category.

Over the course of its ten-year history, Eastern Bloc has cultivated a community of digital art makers and enthusiasts while remaining committed to fostering the careers of emerging and young artists. How has this space for risk-taking, aesthetic irreverence, and creative audacity developed over the course of the last ten years, while remaining true to this ethos?

"Amplification", in its figurative and literal sense, is the act of making something more marked or enhanced, on the one hand, and the process of increasing the amplitude of an electrical signal, on the other. Amplification of both artists’ careers and art practices is what Eastern Bloc strives towards in its programming. It is what prompted the centre to curate a retrospective exhibit featuring the work of artists with whom we have closely collaborated over the past ten years, who are not so emerging anymore, but who inspire us to continue amplifying the work of younger, more emerging artists.

The artists exhibited in "Amplification" form an important part of the digital arts landscape in Canada. Many of them exhibited in group or solo shows for the first time at Eastern Bloc, while others were presented by the centre at a formative stage in their career. They have all, over the past decade, developed a strong bond with the centre and have contributed to strengthening and "amplifying" the community of Canadian and international digital artists.

The exhibiting artists were invited to create a work inspired by the work of ten pioneering Canadian New Media artists.

Erin Geecreated work inspired by Cheryl L'hirondelle; Darsha Hewittby Doug Back; Sofian Audry by Monty Cantsin?; Craig Fahner and Matthew Waddell by Catherine Richards; Adam Basanta by Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller; Jennifer Chanby Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby; Sabrina Ratté and Roger Tellier-Craigby Jean-Pierre Boyer; and Erin Sextonby Michael Snow. Eleven emerging and mid-career artists have, as such, created a body of work that represents a “living archive” of Eastern Bloc. The work exhibited in Amplification delves into and revises the history of New Media art in Canada, as seen through the perspective of a new generation of Canadian artists. Amplification is Eastern Bloc’s contribution to the past, present, and future of digital arts in Montreal and in Canada.